The Naked Island

Synopsis

Deals with the intolerably hard life of a family of four, the only inhabitants of a very small Japanese island in the Setonaikai archipelago. Several times a day they row over to the neighboring island to fetch water for their miserable fields.

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For 94 minutes, I've been transported to post-war Japan. I heard the sea, and I smelled it's air. I walked barefoot on dirt, and I had lunch with a family of four. We took a trip to a strange land, where they had bizarre boxes that had women dancing in them. At night, we watched the fireworks. It was surreal. Flowers were actually blooming in the sky. But then my time was up-- everything ended. I checked my feet, they're as clean as ever. The ocean is nowhere to be seen, yet it still lingers in my ear, the sound of waves ceaselessly beating on the shore.

I have a feeling, if the month keeps up like this, I'll keep saying -- no, no, no, no -- this is why cinema was made! This is why it exists!

I have barely seen a sliver of a sliver of the important or even well known films that exist. And yet, I imagine this film must have gotten into the minds of later directors. Or I wonder it. It reminds me so strongly of The Turin Horse and Goodbye, Dragon Inn (which, in this wacky age, I saw first). Similarly wordless (or almost wordless), minimal, atmospheric movies as meditations. And I now I may forever associate it with Twenty-Four Eyes, a film that similarly shows…

Oh my, rarely are you able to find such a minimalistic, but entirely pure, beautiful and incredibly poignant cinematic poem. Told without dialogue, we're following the daily chores of a little family struggling to live on a small and harsh deserted island, portraying the universal and primal instincts of survival, and life and nature as something simultaneously beautiful and brutal. And no words are needed. It features some absolutely wonderful music, and even more wonderful photography that makes this a very rich, hypnotic moving painting. Its calm and quiet, but ultimately very rewarding, the ending definitely pack a punch. Loved it.

Films dealing with the circumstances surrounding the lives of women and men are equally admirable than those that attempt to deal primarily with their thought process and give them a chance to speak and express their irrationalities, feelings and thoughts. Nevertheless, rarer are the former. Seldom does cinema give us an opportunity to behold circumstances from a scope that contemplates them as bigger than us, and therefore completely capable of shaping our existence. Such is the stunning physical context provided by the sceneries of the Setonaikai archipielago, and such is its purpose. We, as irrationally rational human beings, are the summary of the entire set of situations, contexts and stimuli that surround us, interpreted by our unique set of personality…

I am not really in a position to really analyze this in depth, being at my parents' place for the holidays. But this nigh silent, dialogueless film is one of the most stunning and riveting films I've seen. I might have to come back and review it further. It's a sad tale of a family whose life is dominated by the toil of farming on their small island home in Japan, and it wordlessly shows a year of their life.

It culminates in one of the saddest, most heartwrenching breakdowns I can name, a moment of intense grief accentuated by the response to it--just continuing to work. It speaks volumes, but there's a grace here that denies this moment the scathing quality it might otherwise have.

With a career spanning over sixty years Kaneto Shindo’s true success came from his most experimental film, The Naked Island. Being the gold standard for Visual storytelling, this hypnotic piece captures the beauty in such simplistic rhythms. Relying on purely astounding visuals accompanied by a superb score The Naked Island will hold the viewer in a trance while transporting them to an island during post-war Japan. A Visual language so masterfully realized to tell the poetic story of a family enduring hardships with their dispiriting repetition to preserve their fields and live another day. The grass sways, the wind howls, the water flows, and life moves on.

It's amazing how much depth and story can be told with out dialogue or inter-tiles. The actors give great performances especially Nobuko Otowa who was memorizing. The score was strong and the cinematography was beautiful. I can't give it a higher rating because I was never really drawn in on an emotional level and I ended up wanting a little more than I got. It's a great movie though and one I think everyone should see at least once.

I wholly appreciate the craft of this film—as admittably so, this is quite nearly the kind of film I would like to make in the future—and I totally get why a lot of people expected me to love this; yet, The Naked Island does not work for me. It's Pather Panchali five years later, and The Turin Horse fifty-one years before, and yet it doesn't exceed either of them. The film follows the tedium of survival, as a family endures their lives on an island in continual repetition. It focuses on their lives, and doesn't distract itself with a pointless or melodramatic narrative, which is rather nice. However sadly, The Naked Island just doesn't have a whole lot of substance—it's…

A bit too National Geographic-y for my tastes, although it duly follows other models like Man of Aran, I am Cuba, etc. Probably should rate it higher, but I couldn’t actually make it through the whole film.

A modern Sisyphean tale, re-imagined within the context of Japan and its people in the 60s. There is no boulder to roll up a steep hill, but water buckets to shoulder; nothing gets rolled down, but buckets need to be refilled — over and over again, with no room for a misstep under the scorching sun. When the earth cannot be cultivated in the harshness of the weather, it needs to be tended in other ways. It needs to be singed and prayed to, and as it later turns out, the earth is thirsty for more.

I expected this to be somewhat similar to Tarr's The Turin Horse, a film about life-consuming routines, but the film expands its narrative and…